Some pretty exciting ape-related news happened yesterday: theDonkey Kong CountrySNES game is coming to Nintendo Switch Online.
Dont get me started aboutthe lack of the N64 support.
Nows not the time.
And, in turn, I wondered how much buying them all back in the day wouldve cost.
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First off, we need a list of the games.
BecauseDonkey Kong Countrywas on the SNES, I decided to only focus on that console in this piece.
Or ask nicely and Ill do NES games later.
So, what we have here is a list of30 SNESgames.
Next up, we need to find out how much they cost when first released.
For example, siteslike Price Charting only go back to 2008, which is no help to us.
Of course, this wont be entirely accurate, but it puts us in the right ballpark.
But I think we can go further than that.
Why dont we adjust it for inflation?
Yes, thanks for asking, that did take some time to find out.
Before I give you the figure, a couple of notes on the release dates.
BothPopn TwinBeeandSmash Tenniswerent published in North America, but appeared in both Japan and Europe.
I used this release date (1993) instead.
It only saw the light of day officially as one of the SNES games on Nintendo Switch online.
We used its original 1995 release date.
To adjust for inflation,I used this calculator tool.
And the final spreadsheet looks like this:
And…
DRUM ROLL like… the combined cost of all these SNES games came to$2,898.64.
Now, Nintendo Switch Online costs $19.99 every 12 months.
This means itd takejust over 145 yearsof subscribing to that service before you were losing money.
Or the online play.
While were here, we may as well compare the respective cost of the consoles too.
At launch, a SNES cost $199, which would work out to$374.61today.
The Nintendo Switch on the other hand launched at $299, which is now equivalent to$312.75.
To wrap up, yes, I know the SNES games on Nintendo Switch online arentworthalmost $3,000.
This was simply a little experiment showing how value changes over time.
And, importantly, I had fun.
So, suck it?
